Lalit Vachani
Lalit Vachani is a documentary filmmaker, producer and video editor. He studied at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in the US.
His documentary work includes The Starmaker (about the business of ‘starmaking’ in the Hindi film industry); The Boy in the Branch and The Men in the Tree (on the RSS and Hindu nationalism); The Play Goes On (about the left street theatre group, Jana Natya Manch); The Salt Stories (following the trail of Mahatma Gandhi’s salt march in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat); Tales from Napa (about a village that resisted Hindu fundamentalism during the 2002 Gujarat riots), An Ordinary Election (an in-depth study of an Indian election campaign) and Die letzten Tage (about the last days of a refugee centre in Germany).
Vachani teaches courses on media and politics, the political documentary and documentary film theory and production at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Films
Sanjay Srivastava
Sanjay Srivastava is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. His publications include Constructing Post-colonial India: National Character and the Doon School (Routledge, 1998); Passionate Modernity, Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India (Routledge, 2007); Sexuality Studies (OUP, 2013); Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (OUP, 2015); and Critical Theme in Indian Sociology (SAGE, 2019, co-editor). His co-edited volume, (Hi)stories of Desire: Sexualities and Culture in Modern India is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
His current research focuses on urban cultures and changing identities in the context of new forms of work. In February 2020, he will take up the position of British Academy Global Professor at University College London.
Priya Sen
Priya Sen is a New Delhi based filmmaker and artist who works with nonfiction and experimental forms across film /video, sound, and installation. Her films have been presented at the Flaherty Seminar 2019, among other festivals and venues that include The Kitchen NYC, BFI London Film Festival, Forum Expanded Berlinale, Bangalore Queer Fest, Outfest LA, Experimenta, Kochi Biennale and Dharamshala International Film Festival.
Syed Husain Akbar
A professional videographer & photographer with a penchant for adventure, Husain Akbar’s 20-year professional career has sent him hiking across glaciers in southern Patagonia, filming under the midnight sun in the Norwegian Arctic for the National Geographic Channel, capturing Afghanistan’s unpredictable yet starkly beautiful landscapes, filming ice hockey in Ladakh in sub-zero temperatures, and going shutter happy in tech-crazy Japan. His work as cameraman includes: Insight: Inside Sri Lanka’s Power Struggle, Channel News Asia, Singapore, 2019; Journeys of Women in Mathematics, MicroDocumentaries/Simons Foundation, 2018; Lion Heart: A documentary about a Chinese conservationist in the Masai Mara, History Channel, 2018; Living Golf, CNN, 2018; Undercover Asia: Manufactured Orphans, Channel News Asia, Singapore, 2017; Challenge Tomorrow: Confronting Climate Change, Channel News Asia, Singapore. 2017; Gyamo – Queen of The Mountains, A documentary about snow leopards in the Himalayas, Animal Planet, 2017; Jawai: India’s leopard hills; Discovery Channel, 2015; Opportunity In America, Future View Inc, 2015; Mission Arctic, National Geographic Channel, 2014.
Godly Timo Koshy
Godly Timo Koshy is a Cinematographer and Sound Designer who has been working in Mumbai and Kochi for the past ten years. He received his Diploma in Sound Engineering from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune and a Diploma in Cinematography from K.R Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts, Kottayam. His repertoire includes sound design for Feature Films, Documentaries and Television, and he has been part of several award winning productions. Currently, Koshy works as a freelance Cinematographer. He is always interested in collaborating with people for telling better stories, and enjoys writing for films.
Girjashanker Vohra, Lohit Bhalla, Abhishek Singh
at Depot Records:
Depot Records is a recording, mixing, post production and audio design studio based out of New Delhi.Our body of work spans short length feature and documentary films, advertising films and music, voice-over recording, dubbing for films,TV and sound design. We have one of the top acoustically treated recording floors in the city. Girjashanker, Lohit, and Abhishek share responsibilities of recording and post production at Depot Records. They are trained audio engineers with over 17 years of “sound” experience all together. Apart from the love of audio they share common interests in music, afghan cuisine and hand sanitisers!
Srirupa Roy
Srirupa Roy is a professor and chair of political science and modern Indian studies at the University of Göttingen. She is a former director of ICAS:MP, an India-Germany research initiative of the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and co-ordinates the ICAS:MP research modules on Democracy and Media.
Her books include Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Duke University Press, 2007), Violence and Democracy in India (co-edited with Amrita Basu, Seagull 2006), Visualizing Secularism and Religion (co-edited with Alev Cinar and Maha Yahya, University of Michigan Press, 2012).
Roy has researched, curated, and co-produced the Long Emergency, a digital humanities project on media and democracy in India, hosted by the Democracy Archive of ICAS:MP.